Child Injury Prevention Tool
Selecting Best Practices

Welcome to the Child Injury Prevention Tool

This site is designed to help you make recommendations and identify strategies that when implemented may prevent child deaths and injuries. The site examines a broad range of interventions designed to prevent injury and death due to the top causes of injury death for children ages 0–18.

This tool can be used by any person or organization; but it is especially tailored to help Child Death Review (CDR) team members move from case review to action as part of the fatality review process.

The strategies presented here were identified through a comprehensive search of the literature and review by experts in the field of child injury prevention.

To use the site, choose the mechanism (or cause) of injury you are interested in working to prevent. Once you move to that type of injury, you will find an overview, links to resources and partners and a number of major injury prevention strategies including:

Education

Legislation and Policy

Modification of Products

Modifications of Physical Environments

Modifications of Social Environments

Once you select a strategy, a number of interventions will be presented. You may select all of them or select them according to the rating assigned. These ratings include:

Recommended: there is sufficient evidence from well conducted studies that the intervention is likely to prevent deaths or injuries.

Promising: there is some evidence from well conducted studies or from expert opinion that the intervention is likely to prevent deaths or injuries or at a minimum change behaviors and reduce risks.

Unproven: there is insufficient evidence available to form an expert opinion or scientific judgment as to effectiveness. Promotion of these interventions should not be pursued by a community if recommended or promising interventions can be implemented instead.

Ineffective: there is evidence from well-conducted studies that these interventions do not prevent deaths or injuries or reduce related risks.

Harmful: there is evidence from well-conducted studies that these interventions have deleterious effects and thus should not be implemented.

The site was designed in two stages.

Stage One was conducted by the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, supported in part by an HHS HRSA EMS–C Targeted Issues Grant. The Harborview team first developed five causes:

Through extensive literature searches and peer review by experts in each content area, they reviewed and rated the strength and quality of published evidence supporting the efficacy of these interventions. They established through consensus, a rating of the research supporting each intervention and identified evidence-based best practices in injury prevention for each studied mechanism.

Stage Two was conducted by the Michigan Public Health Institute’s National Center for Child Death Review in partnership with the Education Development Center’s Children’s Safety Network, supported in part by a grant from the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau and the Department of Justice Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency. The five additional causes of deaths were completed in Stage Two.

Stage two differed from the Harborview approach, in that following extensive literature review, a team internal to the two participating agencies assigned the ratings, and then submitted their findings to a small group of peer reviewers (three for each cause) but were not seeking consensus from a larger body of experts.

For more information on the two stages and the criteria used to establish the ratings please go to Our Process.